


colours

by naeildo



Category: TWICE (Band)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-29
Updated: 2019-11-29
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:01:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21604156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/naeildo/pseuds/naeildo
Summary: "I saw you first," Sana slurred, into Mina's nape. Her arm was hanging loose around Mina's waist, the two of them in an awkward position, but Mina could still feel herself flush uncontrollably. She'd had a bit too much to drink, Mina knew, would lie loose-limbed later in bed while Mina peeled her shirt off her skin. "You'll never take that away from me."
Relationships: Minatozaki Sana/Myoui Mina
Comments: 5
Kudos: 179





	colours

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dubfu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dubfu/gifts).



> based on [the quiet world](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49238/the-quiet-world)

  
Beauty is something that burns the hand when you touch it.

— Yukio Mishima, from Forbidden Colors (Alfred A. Knopf, 1968)

*

  
  
Sana buys some tape recorders, a cassette player to go with it. Mina will later learn that she filched it off one of their neighbours, who seemed to be trying to sell everything he's ever been able to fit into his storeroom and the apartment alongside it, though the two of them don't quite have the funds to buy it off him in the near future. Or any time in the next fifty years, actually. Sana carries her spoils back into the house quietly, but closes the door hard enough that the bells she's attached above it jingle -  
  
Which jolts Mina awake on the couch she's drifted off on. The smile that Sana's wearing when Mina's vision has finally stopped swimming is mischievous, pulls at the edge of the left corner of her lips as she sets down the cassette player on their dining table. She's brought a bag of groceries too, taking her time to place them into the fridge. Mina would stand up to help her, but that always seems to end up with Sana insisting that she can do it by herself and her hands on Mina's waist pressing her into the kitchen counter, the groceries forgotten, Mina's palms hitched up against the square of Sana's back, them giggling into each other's mouths. So Mina just sits, now, watches as Sana pulls out the yoghurt she'd wanted to try the last time they'd gone to the mart together. Sana looks over to see if Mina's noticed - and of course she has, and of course Sana smiles, so wide that it still knocks the air out of Mina's lungs, and of course Sana's eyes soften in the evening's dying light.  
  
After she's done, Sana carries the player over to Mina, who's taken to reading the book she'd left open on her lap before she'd fallen asleep. Sana slides in beside Mina on the couch, crowding her out with her butt, which makes Mina laugh, giggling into the pink sweatshirt Sana just washed yesterday that still smells like lavender. Sana mouths a little at Mina's neck - and it's too casual to mean anything besides being one of Sana's acquired habits, but Mina still blushes anyway.  
  
Then Sana slides a hand quietly over Mina's, finger anchoring a page open. Gentle enough that Mina knows Sana means: keep reading. I'll be here. Uses her other hand to slide in a tape. Presses the _play_ button. Tilts her head towards the radio. _Listen_.  
  
For a good few seconds, Mina thinks that Sana's put in the wrong tape -- all she hears is the crinkle of what sounds like leaves and an old piano playing in the background. The pianist keeps missing so many notes that Mina thinks it might be on purpose.  
  
And then, and then: _Good afternoon, Mi-tan_.  
  
The first words she's heard from Sana today besides a _good morning_.  
  
_It's Autumn_.  
  
Mina looks over at Sana, who's burrowed into her side, eyes closed. She hasn't fallen asleep, but there's a reason she isn't looking at Mina. The sun is setting now, leaving only the lights in their apartment to illuminate the curve of her cheek, harsh from the weight she's been losing at her job recently. Finding ways to market things without words get a little difficult after a while. The Sana who's on tape lets out a loud, happy sigh.  
  
_This is where we first met._  
  
A giggle. They can still giggle, so Sana does. A long, loud one that sends warmth pooling into Mina's stomach. She reaches up absentmindedly to thread fingers through Sana's brown hair, and Sana keens into it. Her face is warm.  
  
_Isn't this romantic?_ Sana says, on tape, and Mina looks down to see Sana staring back up at her, eyes wide with something unnameable.  
  
_I accidentally told an auntie that her shirt looked gorgeous today, so forgive me for the fact that I saved fewer for you. Oh, I just did it again!_  
  
Mina laughs, sliding her hand down to Sana's shoulder. Sana's tucked her sock-clad feet under her thighs, and laughs into Mina's arm as she starts to speak on tape again.  
  
_I don't know what I would have done if I hadn't found you. On the banks of this river, four years ago. Everyone around me is staring at me because I'm using all my words up. I wonder...._  
  
Sana's taken Mina's hands within her own now, fingers curled against each other in the middle of Mina's lap.  
  
_I'll use everything. Every tape recorder. Every phone recorder. Gramaphones. I love you. I'm sorry. Thank you._  
  
"I still have some left," Sana says from beside her, smiling her cheshire cat smile, and the weight of it breathes new air into Mina's lungs. She presses a kiss to the corner of Mina's mouth, hands lifting to slide against the curve of her jaw.  
  
Mina unsticks her tongue from the roof of her mouth. Her voice must be gravelly. "Don't know either," Mina says. Looks down at her watch - it reads **5**. She'd spent almost all of it on her phone call with her mother earlier. Sana's pressed closer, tipping her forehead so it presses against Mina's. Breath ghosting against Mina's mouth.  
  
"How I got so lucky."  
  
  
*  
  
  
When they'd first met, the ban hadn't even been mooted to Parliament yet, could only be found in the sallow corners of LINE groups that Mina had the misfortune of being added to by her conspiracy theorist aunt.  
  
Mina had just exited from the group when Sana nearly crashed into her on a bike before swerving off, flung out of space.  
  
Or, actually, flung onto the pavement, her knee scraped clean. Mina standing next to her, thumb hovering above the keypad, the message to Momo she was about to send about lunch the next day forgotten.  
  
"Are you okay?" Mina said, rushing to crouch by her side, and then found herself entirely unsure what to do with the girl who'd started giggling on the ground, clutching at her ankle as she sat up. She was wearing a neon green helmet, and Mina couldn't help but laugh at how it made her look with the pink tracksuit. Then Sana lifted her head, and Mina's breath caught in her throat.  
  
( _You fell in love with me right then_! Sana had teased, later, when she'd told the story to a small room of friends gathered to celebrate Mina's birthday. Sana had bought the decorations and sent the invitations, and Mina had opened the door, picking off the buttons of her blazer, before she was greeted with a wall of noise.  
  
"I just thought you were pretty," Mina said, red flooding to her cheeks, and Nayeon howled from somewhere across the room.  
  
Later, when the party had wrapped up and Mina followed Sana and Jeongyeon around as they picked up the debris off the floor, Sana reached up and wrapped a quiet arm around Mina's waist from where she was crouched on the floor, bringing Mina down with her, stumbling into her warm body. Jeongyeon rolled her eyes and kept sweeping, but there was a fond smile etched on her face.  
  
"I saw you first," Sana slurred, into Mina's nape. Her arm was hanging loose around Mina's waist, the two of them in an awkward position, but Mina could still feel herself flush uncontrollably. She'd had a bit too much to drink, Mina knew, would lie loose-limbed later in bed while Mina peeled her shirt off her skin. "You'll never take that away from me."  
  
"I was a blur," Mina said, indulgently, and Sana cough-laughed into her shirt.  
  
"The brightest blur my eyes had ever seen," Sana retorted, clearly, impossibly, drunk, and Momo knocked her onto the ground with a knee to the side, laughing as Sana toppled over, bringing Mina along with her.)  
  
  
  
*  
  
  
Mina's been re-learning the piano recently.

There's a new beauty to it that she'd only started to see after the ban set in - Sana doesn't really understand ballet, but she likes music, and listens to the soundtracks of Ghibli films to sleep. Mina - Mina wants to be part of that too, somehow, now that she can't soothe Sana to sleep with words.  
  
The experience is a little funny, if Mina were to be honest - the teacher that she's hired can only slap at her hands and pull out cue cards that he'd prepared before the lesson, but Mina's fingers are so clumsy from disuse, her eyes still getting used to speed-reading the sheets in front of her.  
  
When Sana comes home, Mina is at the dinner table and playing games on her phone. This would all be fine, except that Mina is playing an old version of Animal Crossing instead of PUBG, which seems to Sana to be the number one sign that something is wrong. They've set up a whiteboard in the middle of their living room because Sana likes the irony of it all, and Mina likes the smell of the green marker in particular. Sana uncaps it and starts writing.  
  
_Did I do something wrong?_  
  
Mina pauses her game and looks up, and the laugh that she lets out unloosens the knots that'd started to tie up in Sana's stomach. Mina shakes her head decisively - once. The auburn in her hair is already starting to fade, turned into a deep brown. She supposes it's better for court sessions, where all Mina has is her bundle of submissions and her young face. Sana turns back to the whiteboard.  
  
_Did you do something wrong?_  
  
Sana's eyes are kind, and Mina has memorized the way that they curve into moons when she's happy, when Mina does something that Sana finds hilarious, for some reason. When Mina kisses her. Mina places her phone on the table, face-down.  
  
Picks up Sana's blue marker, scratching out words onto the plastic surface.  
  
_I play the piano like a five-year-old_.  
  
Sana laughs, then, and it comes out unbidden after dragging herself out of bed on a weekend to fake her smiles at everything, nodding at the visual presentations that seemed to stretch into forever. Wraps Mina's shoulders in her arms, warm and heavy and steady. The sound is like a siren, pulling Mina closer.  
  
"I love you," Sana says, unbidden, and Mina startles. "No matter how you play the piano." Sana always sounds so sure, Mina thinks. Even when she falters each day, sometimes, staring out the window. Wondering if she'll come back to find Sana gone, chasing some brighter horizon that isn't Mina's heaviness, and her tiredness, and every anxious thing that curls up in her chest until Sana notices and holds her closer, kissing it away.  
  
They're so economical, now, with their words. Always saving some for emergencies, for _thank yous_. For yelling after a child who's gone the wrong way and is about to toddle onto the road. Sana is a little more careless, still, when it comes to Mina, carelessly uttering things in her sleep interspersed with _Mi-tan, Mi-tan, Mi-tan_. Mina can't say that she minds.  
  
  
*  
  
  
"How do you think we'll do?"  
  
Sana leaned against the headboard of their bed, fingers tangled with Mina's own. It was turning into winter now, and they'd taken out one of the heavier quilts from the cupboard. Sana bought woollen pajamas for Mina which scratched against her skin, then she bought velvet ones, and then she'd just taken to wrapping Mina up in her own body heat, falling asleep with the other girl tucked between her messy limbs.  
  
The ban was to begin within the next week. They couldn't be sure when, but her colleagues and their neighbours had already started preparing for it to come into effect at any time now, always staring at her with nothing more than a smile when she greeted them. It was so different, coming back to Sana chattering away about the ingredients that she'd bought for their third attempt at making omu rice. Sana who always waited to be told to stop than to be told to start.  
  
Mina glanced down at the watch they were required to wear around their wrists, blinking the time back at her. Soon it would be listening to them, too.  
  
"We'll be fine," Mina said, and felt Sana's fingers tighten imperceptibly around her own. "I'm stubbornly good at finding my way around rules, and you're adaptable enough." Mina had been thinking through it a lot - it was easy enough for their law firm to adapt. Most things were done through typing now, anyway. Sana's company was facing a little more difficulty, but Mina didn't know who she had more faith in than Sana.  
  
Sana shifted closer. "I've never spoken much anyway," Mina said, and Sana frowned, then, the obvious crease of her brows making Mina laugh even with the weight of the unknown harking ever closer.  
  
"You speak to _me_ ," Sana said. _I listen to you_ , Sana meant.  
  
"I know," Mina said, softly, and Sana softened beside her, placated. Mina angled herself so she could place a hand on Sana's cheek. It was an uncontrollable urge, sometimes, the need to be bound to Sana in some way. The hand she couldn't help slipping into Sana's own when they were just walking down the street. Sana had never stopped encouraging it, never seemed to grow tired of it. Returned Mina's affection, squeezed from her at the start, with a tidal wave. It was how the other girl was, Mina had come to learn. It was how Sana loved, like a force of nature, bringing Mina under.  
  
  
*  
  
  
If you asked Mina, she'd say that Sana confessed first. Because she did, in every way except with words. That was the curious thing about her, Mina thought, that Sana was so brave in everything aside from the fact that someone else could love her the way she loved them.  
  
Sana had brought her to a cafe on the outskirts of Kobe, a quaint coffee place that was decorated with golden fairy lights.  
  
"How did you find this place?" Mina asked, stepping across the threshold with Sana into a sprawling space, Sana's eyes bright as she looked back at her.  
  
"Mi-tan," Sana whispered conspiratorially, leaning in so their noses were nearly touching, "I'm nothing if not resourceful." Then her face lit up, as it tended to do around Mina, before she moved in to kiss her on the cheek. And Mina wondered when Sana would say it - when they would make it official. It felt silly even thinking about it, so Mina followed Sana to the table at the corner, leaned against the mahogany backing of the chair, painted a vivid gold to fit the theme.  
  
Sana pressed the tip of her finger to the items on the menu, skimming slowly down them. "This place is supposed to have the best omu rice in all of Kobe," she was saying, distractedly, and Mina heard herself say: "Do you want me? Because I think I really want you."  
  
Sana's knee, which had been bouncing up and down uncontrollably, stilled. Her eyes flickered up, and they were filled with a kind of raw tenderness that set something off in Mina's chest. "Sorry?"  
  
Mina cleared her throat. "I said, do you want me?"  
  
There's were a thousand things flickering across Sana's face all at once, but not one of them was uncertainty. It was something more like wonder, if Mina could approximate it. Like Sana had just seen something beautiful - a sunrise, or a sunset, like the way Sana looked at Mina in the morning, when Mina emerged from her room in their shared apartment and smiled at Sana before going to the bathroom.  
  
"I -" Sana said, before the server came back to take their orders. Her face morphed into something calmer, assured. "We'll have one omu rice and a green tea latte, please," Sana said, her voice cracking in a way that Mina had never quite heard before.  
  
Then Mina's shame came rushing back to her. "I'm sorry if - I shouldn't have -"  
  
"I do," Sana said, reaching for Mina's hand. Cutting her caveats short. The motion was familiar. The words were not. "I do, every day for forever. Until I am -" Sana sighed for a lack of words, the kind that shot through Mina like an electric current. "Until I can't anymore. I want to want you forever, Mi-tan," Sana had said. And there was something unbearably true in those words, Mina knew, for someone who'd spent her whole life thinking everyone else was lying.  
  
So Mina had believed her.  
  
  
*  
  
  
The truth is this: Sana can love Mina, in the mornings when she wakes up first. Presses out Mina's work clothes before doing her own, and sorts and empties the garbage before the sun has started to rise. Takes pictures of everything as she goes through her day, sending them to Mina with emojis that say more than words could.  
  
The other truth, equally real: Mina can love her too, in different ways, take her hand when she walks through the door after another late night. Press her up against the wall before they can get to the bedroom, Sana's hair falling out of her scrunchie, Mina's knees on the marble floor.  
  
They can unlearn the economy of words; Mina had always known that. But Mina doesn't know how to unlearn _this_ , the rhythm of Sana's heartbeat when she's half asleep. The shape of her name in Sana's mouth.  
  
It's only right that she doesn't have to.


End file.
